Portraits: the ‘Truth About Life’

It starts with a simple question: “Would you be interested in sitting for me?” asks Los Angeles portraitist Don Bachardy quite shyly and unobtrusively. Bachardy, with his white locks of hair, impish smile and piercing blue-gray eyes behind sleek glasses, intensely awaits an answer.

World-renowned for his portraits of film stars, authors, artists and politicians, Bachardy is one of few contemporary artists who has made a living drawing and painting live models he calls “sitters.”

Volunteers who visit his studio daily for portraits number in the thousands, and they’re mostly not celebrities but friends, casual acquaintances and strangers. He jokingly likens his series of appointments with sitters to “one-night stands.” Bachardy has been busy in the last year.

Fifteen of his new paintings will go on exhibit Saturday for the first time at the Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana. In the series, Gloria Stuart, who once played opposite James Cagney and recently starred in “Titanic” as the elder Rose, is the most recognizable celebrity. Other subjects are local artists, musicians, actors and writers.

Bachardy documents life through faces. His quick, broad brushstrokes of acrylic color capture the fleeting light and changing moods of each model. The effect is a raw, uncanny resemblance.

His works are part of the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Portrait Gallery in London and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

Bachardy blends “surgical accuracy with emotive empathy,” Times art critic William Wilson wrote in a review.

“If you want a flattering portrait, you’re best going to a photographer. With me, everything is information, so every detail is likely to go into the picture,” said Bachardy, 67, in his distinct, raspy British accent. “Beauty to me is truth. That’s what is endlessly more fascinating. Our faces are a visual record and history of who we are and all that we’ve experienced. A particular face carries a particular truth about life.”

Sunlight and the cool ocean breeze flood his hillside studio at the foot of Santa Monica Canyon. Here, a sitter’s simple wooden chair with a well-worn seat pad faces the Pacific in the distance. There’s a platform strewn with pillows for reclining. Bachardy paints while standing at a workbench. The two-level studio is crowded with walls of framed portraits.

His lifelong fascination with faces began with his love for movies. When he was 4, he drew actress Alice Faye from a magazine cover. Since then he’s drawn Bette Davis, Ginger Rogers, Alec Guinness, Jack Nicholson, Mia Farrow, Robert Mapplethorpe, Peter Alexander, Allen Ginsberg and Aldous Huxley.

The artist, who dabbled in acting school in London before he attended Chouinard Art Institute (now California Institute of the Arts), lived with English author Christopher Isherwood for 33 years. Isherwood, famed for his stories which inspired the stage and film versions of “Cabaret,” encouraged and funded Bachardy’s schooling. The author died in 1986 from prostate cancer at age 81.

Raised in Los Angeles, Bachardy fondly and tearfully remembers Isherwood. “If it weren’t for Chris, I wouldn’t have become an artist. But he gave me the confidence in my talent to draw people.”

But it didn’t come easily. “I fought it initially because I was afraid I would be exposed as someone who couldn’t draw but wanted to pretend that I was an artist,” he said.

Bachardy describes his sessions as “confrontations with people.”

“Doing portraits is like me being an actor impersonating the person I’m looking at, twisting my own face into their expressions,” he said. “Getting into the role allows me extra access to the person, and I put down that feeling on paper.”

His stare, sitters say, can be an unsettling experience. Some suddenly become self-conscious and insecure at being so blatantly scrutinized. The model’s task, to remain utterly still and silent, is physically demanding. One sitting can take up to seven hours, during which Bachardy can produce half a dozen portraits. The first few are warm-ups.

As sitter and author Carolyn See puts it, “Your feet go immediately to sleep.” A stiff neck, muscle spasms, headaches, shallow breathing and a vague itchiness are part of the experience.

“I don’t know anyone who has a fetish of just drawing people--any person, not just celebrities--from life,” Bachardy said.

But he’s not used to being stared at. On one occasion when Patricia Ellsberg, wife of Daniel Ellsberg (famed for leaking the Pentagon Papers), came to the studio and was so enthralled by his gaze that she challenged him to a staring contest without his paintbrush.

“I just dissolved in embarrassment,” Bachardy confessed boyishly. “At times I think I invented myself as an artist as a licensed excuse to look at people more closely in ways I never would in ordinary situations, because it would be considered rude.”

He was even more frightened to stare at celebrities, initially.

“Here was a world-famous actress or actor that I worshipped as a child, and there she or he was sitting just for me,” Bachardy said. “If I do an unflattering picture of them, they’d never sit for me again. It’s a big responsibility to capture a likeness that they would like. So that was a lot of pressure.”

But he’s overcome such youthful awe.

He begins with the vitality and freshness of the eyes. To get started, he often makes a single splash of color across the paper. His early works were pencil drawings and black ink washes until he gained more confidence in his draftsmanship. By the 1990s, he preferred a free, loose style of painting, exclusively in color.

“If I’m happy with the eyes, I have more confidence to finish the portrait and see if my luck holds,” Bachardy said.

He keeps a one-sitting rule: Portraits are finished in a day. Rarely does he erase or “touch-up” a painting. He’d rather start anew than restage a previous setting.

If the work was not commissioned, sitters receive an 8-by-10-inch photograph of the first portrait completed. Bachardy keeps the paintings.

It’s not uncommon for Bachardy to continue long-term ties with his sitters, who often return. Gloria Stuart was a model for 30 years. His friend Don Cribb, an arts activist and board member of Grand Central who founded the Artists Village in Santa Ana, has posed for 25 years. Cribb’s portraits will be showcased in the Project Room at Grand Central on Nov. 3 during a dedication ceremony for Cribb.

“It’s like keeping a visual diary. I can go back 25 years and see the range of my work, how it’s changed over the years and how the subject has changed,” said Bachardy, who requires his sitters to sign and date the images. In fact, last year he authored “Stars in My Eyes,” accounts of celebrity sittings from his diaries.

He exercises three times a week to keep the physical and mental stamina that live portrait drawing demands.

“Sometimes I’m working with a sitter so intensely that I feel drained to the point that I can’t speak and I have to take a break just to be by myself for a little while. Of course, I can’t tell the sitter that,” Bachardy said. “But it’s also a luxury for me because I love that intense experience and connection.

“Forgetting oneself is such bliss,” he said. “That’s why we go to movies and why I love to do portraits. It’s a way to identify with another character, get involved or be moved by other people.”

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“Recent Works by Don Bachardy,” Grand Central Art Center, 125 N. Broadway, Santa Ana. Reception: Saturday, 7-10 p.m. Gallery hours: Tuesdays through Sundays, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Free. Ends Dec. 2. (715) 567-7233.